It isn't just us digital-based entrepreneurs that have to be worried about the effects of the online lifestyles on our bodies.... kids today are spending more time curled up around small devices and less time out running, playing, and being kids. When added to the time kids spend hunched over a desk at school this can lead to truly problematic issues. Definitely something that kids (and adults) need to pay attention to!

A bold entrepreneur with a radical startup. An African-American. In tech, those two phrases usually don't go together. Enter Tristan Walker.

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

It isn't just females that Silicon Valley and many other tech hubs show a shortage of... it's also racial minorities. (And female minorities are a statistic that is much closer to zero than any real number.)

Yet, it's important that we look at people breaking ground and hold them as role models - in the same way we do their peers - so that kids of all genetics may have people to look up too in the elite sector of business, entrepreneur-ism, and tech.

There's three pieces of very true and very impactful business advice in this little article. I hope you'll not only give it a read but stop for just a moment and think about what it really means to YOUR business.

If you can’t write, your foremost foe is perfection paralysis. You need to slay that nasty beast. Welcome to the writing process.

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

These tips are not only for the novice! If you sometimes struggle to create written content of any sort.. this is for you! This isn't fluff either as this approach is exactly the approach that the most prolific writers eventually learn as they move on to master their craft.

One of the standard bearers of America’s broken system — a podcast troll that never made a podcast — has proved depressingly tenacious. Despite winning another jury verdict, the troll’s days may be numbered.

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

One of the standard bearers of America’s broken system — a podcast troll that never made a podcast — has proved depressingly tenacious. Despite winning another jury verdict, the troll’s days may be numbered.

As visual content on social networks has grown, so too has the emphasis on storytelling with pictures. Indelible, craveable, relatable images have become a high currency in the world of content marketing, and the push for visual content seems to only be getting stronger.

We already know that the United States Congress (or the countless people it employs) can't seem to stop editing Wikipedia articles, but do they need to

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

What happens when crowd-sourced content suffers abuse?

This happens => US House of Representatives faces Wikipedia ban thanks to trollish edits

Wikipedia has to work really hard to control for negative trolling showing up in the community creation and appearing as "truth" when it's just some busybody being stupid. However, we'd like to think that our politicians wouldn't be wasting our tax dollars being nasty doing stuff like this... and we'd be wrong it seems.

Luck isn't a mysterious gift of the universe; it's a way of thinking and behaving you can learn, says one psychologist who created a 'luck school.'

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

How to Learn to Be Luckier

"According to experts luck isn't something that just happens, it's something you can learn.

The article lays out Wiseman's research into the impact of luck on people's lives. To conduct his experiments he found and interviewed hundreds of people who either considered themselves abnormally lucky or unlucky.

The difference between the two groups, he found, wasn't the wrath of the gods or simple statistical variation, but rather their actions and attitudes."

We all have them. Days when everything goes wrong, you aren’t as far ahead as you hoped, and your clients are driving you crazy. Whatever the source of your bad day, these quotes will help you get back to work with a smile. You’ve made mistakes. Mistakes can be frustrating. But they are also...

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

Being an entrepreneur can be tough! When you're feeling a bit beat up, check out these inspiring quotes to help you make it through the hurdles.

It's not too late to ditch the ad-based business model and build a better web.

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

I have to laugh somewhat sarcastically at the "we screwed up pretty badly the first time around" comment regarding decisions that lead to the original creation of the first wave of consumer data tracking.

It probably was an inevitable creation though - and that's what makes this post particularly fascinating.

It's too big. It's cannibalizing the economy. It's time for a radical plan.

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

I'm not fully convinced that I totally agree with ALL of the points made in this article. However, there are certainly enough interesting and convincing points here that this post is going to give me a lot of food for though in the upcoming weeks.

I suppose that we talk about Amazon as the New Google and so this was only inevitable.

The more you simplify your user experience, the more likely users are to accomplish the goals you've set for the product, website, or communication at hand. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand walks us through user experience and the actions that we can remove from our processes in order to drive more conversions, earn more links, get more social shares.

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

While friction can play a very important role in helping us sort the right customers from the wrong ones... it also can be the death of many lesser items in our funnel and ultimately result in people never making it to the point of considering being a customer.

Rand walks us through some of the most important places you can reduce friction in your website's efforts.

Usually, employers rapidly scan the resume of each job applicant looking for relevant education, skills, and work experience. They select 10 candidates for telephone calls, invite three in for interviews, and hire the one they like the best. This is a bad way to hire because at best it gets you nice people. You don't need nice people. You...

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

"Good and nice are not the same thing. The opposite of good is bad. The opposite of nice is unlikeable.

Nice people care if you like them; good people care about you. Nice people stretch the truth; good people don’t. If you tell a nice person to do something evil, they might do it because they do not want to upset you; a good person will refuse to do it."

I really like this article as it makes some strong points that can help you get the RIGHT people on your team!

For marketers with big dreams and small budgets, “guerrilla marketing” has a strong appeal – it’s often seen as a low investment, high impact strategy. Here are 6 tips for creating highly innovative, epic guerrilla marketing campaigns.

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

Oh I love these examples - they convey so much great stuff about the brand without being "just more advertising".

If you're looking for something to stoke your creativity, have a look at what these six big brands are doing.

If you’re struggling to convert tire-kickers into brand evangelists, try testing the following strategies on your site to swell the ranks of paying customers while building loyalty and user engagement.

Kimberly Castleberry's insight:

If you're faced with the typical deluge of freebie seekers not converting, here's some useful tips from Kismetrics.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.